


The Bird & the Bull

by ExplosionOfRationality



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 12:23:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5048431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExplosionOfRationality/pseuds/ExplosionOfRationality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oswald and Harvey both prefer having Jim as a partner, but they don't have much of a choice when they're stuck with each other, having to depend on the intimacy they have to forge in order to survive. Or, they're kidnapped and have to do very private things together in order to live through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bird & the Bull

**Author's Note:**

> May cause triggers.

It starts on a Tuesday, the second crappiest day of the week in Harvey's opinion. The weather is the usual Gotham dreariness. The streets are full of bums, drug dealers, and wanna-be gangsters that are too stupid to know he's a cop, or too high to care; he makes the occasional comment to them, telling them to go back to the slums and get out of his neighborhood, but otherwise deems them unworthy of his time. Who is? He might pick up a couple of dogs for breakfast; he's already grabbed his morning coffee, the best joe in town. He doesn't have a shift at work until later in the afternoon, so for the next few hours, he's free. 

That's what he thought until he woke up someplace he definitely didn't fall asleep in. He feels groggy, like he has a hangover he knows that he didn't earn. He sits up slowly, realizing as he does that he's in a chair, and his neck is sore. He's been drugged. He rubs at the needle's entry point while he looks around the small room he's in. 

No windows in the place, far as he can tell. It's almost two in the morning according to his watch. No moonlight shining through any surfaces, any cracks. He allows his eyes to adjust as much as they will before he stands, slowly, to his feet; he feels like he's twice his weight. He makes his way over to what seems to be the only door in the room; to his surprise it opens. An even greater surprise comes after he feels around the wall, flicking on the light: it's the bathroom. He mutters "huh" to himself before turning to scan the room with the new light source. No other visible door. The third surprise he finds keeps him from becoming completely frustrated: there's a person in here with him, someone he looked over, laying in the plush looking bed. 

"Hey!"

His senses still aren't caught completely up to him. Whoever it is, he reckons, was probably drugged too, considering his yell didn't stir them. He stumbles over to the bed, tripping more than once over his own feet. He stops short when he sees the person's face, illuminated by the bathroom light. 

He had been hoping for a beautiful woman who would tell him that he was all wrong with this theories, Jim, even one of the scummy cops he works with. But Cobblepot? He could list a million better options--if his mind would just work right. 

"Wake up!"

He shakes the smaller man by the shoulders, thinking for a moment by his stillness that he may be dead. It's when he presses his fingers to the guy's neck, feeling his pulse, that he relaxes; he'd rather not be stuck in a room for who knows how long with a corpse. Even Cobblepot's corpse. But he might kill the guy himself if he doesn't get up soon. 

"Come on, we have to find a way to get out of here!"

Finally, after shaking him for what feels like a life sentence, the younger of the two starts to rouse. He groans, as if in severe pain, and Harvey thinks that the bastards who drugged him have really done something fowl to the kid before he realizes that Cobblepot is clutching his bum leg. Of course his leg would hurt. 

Harvey backs up a few steps to give the guy some room. Not that he really cares, especially in a situation like this, but he's sure he isn't the first face Cobblepot wants to see when he wakes up. Add panic to that and you've got the equation that'll make a mess turn into a brawl; though he knows he can take him, Harvey doesn't think it's quite the best time.

He watches Oswald grip at his leg, watches him trying rub and soothe it. The man's eyes are closed; he has to know that he isn't in his own bed, that the feel and smell aren't right. Harvey supposes that maybe he's used to this though; maybe getting kidnapped is all the rage right now for low-life gangsters. 

A more plausible explanation is that the Penguin is just as groggy as Harvey had been when he first woke up, and his leg pain outweighs anything else.

He takes the big plunge. He clears his throat.

The kid's gaze shoots up so quickly that Harvey knows it had to hurt; he can tell by the grimace that Cobblepot's head is probably pounding just as hard as his had upon waking. Or maybe the Penguin's face just looks like that because he recognizes him. Harvey throws his hands up in surrender (peace, he tells himself, a white flag, because there's no way he would 'surrender' to such a pathetic person). He backs up a few steps, more to calm the rising tide in his new roommate than for his own safety. His voice is as placating as he knows how to make it, and considering he's been trained to coach information out of rape victims, he can be pretty soft-spoken when he chooses to be, rare as that is. 

"Hey, hey, hey." Three steps back. "Take it easy. Same thing happened to you, happened to me. I woke up here, right in that chair over there." 

He points to the corner it's in, but Oswald doesn't look. Blue eyes pierce through him, and suddenly he feels sick to his stomach. How is he gonna get them out of here? The last two cops who ended up in this situation couldn't. 

This is the third case like this, as far as he knows. A cop and a mobster, locked into a room together. The first case lasted for two months. The second one lasted for three weeks; it ended when the officer was shot down and the mobster was poisoned. Both times, both of the victims were male, and both sets were given the same option to gain freedom. As far as the police could tell, the second pair blew their instructions, along with any chance of being let go. 

He hopes that maybe he's wrong. Maybe some nice, quick cannibals caught them. Because if he has to do what he thinks he has to do to get free, he knows already that he's dead on his feet. Even if Cobblepot does cooperate, he doesn't think he can bring himself to do it. 

"My name is Harvey Bullock. Do you remember me?" A quick nod; Harvey doesn't know if it's a good or bad thing. "Do you remember what happened to you?" A shake no. "Yeah, me neither." He lowers his hands. "But I have a pretty good idea."

That's when they hear the click of a loudspeaker. They both look up at the ceiling once the voice comes over it, trying to find the source. 

"Good evening, gentleman. Are you such? I sure hope so. You're going to need to be to get out of your current situation."

They make eye contact with each other. The fear in Cobblepot's eyes hits home in his gut in a way that makes the situation suddenly seem so much more real. He subconsciously makes his way over to the man slowly, coming to stand beside of where he's still curled up on the bed. He isn't sure if it's a good idea to be near the guy when the shit hits the fan--and he knows that it's about to--but the dread coiling in his stomach like a snake is telling him that the easier he tries to make it on his new partner, the higher their chances of surviving is. He resists putting a hand on the trembling shoulder beside his hip though; that would be a rookie mistake.

"I'm sure you know why you're here, Detective." Blue eyes look to him for answers. "But your new little friend here, does he? You've kept my stories out of the newspapers. Perhaps you shouldn't have. Maybe then he would be as well prepared as you seem to be. I'll let you be the one to fill him in on the details. You have until noon. Have fun. And remember, it's a show. Make it worth my while. And be the gentlemen that I know you can be."

He mutters obscenities to himself; the officer from the first case mentioned in his report that they would make any snide comments unworth shouting. The guy left for Rio before he could really be questioned. 

He knows now by the look in Cobblepot's eyes that he should be backing up. It was a mistake to get near the man. His hands go up once more, and he slowly backtracks to the chair he was sleeping in earlier. It's more comfortable than he remembers; he sarcastically thinks to himself to get one for his own run down dump. Not that this place is shaggy; it's better than anything he's lived in.

"Well?" A cold bite from a tense mouth. But the eyes, that's the trick; Oswald Cobblepot can't hide anything in his eyes, including vulnerability. "I'm waiting."

A sigh escapes him; he couldn't have held it in if he had tried. Where to begin? Might as well make it as plain as he can for the kid. After all, it's all really simple, isn't it? The motion itself. It's everything that comes with it that's the real bitch. 

"Listen up, 'cos I don't want to say this more than once. Someone's been kidnapping members of the police force and locking them up with mafia members. What comes next is ugly, trust me, so prepare yourself: we have to bone. Skin on skin, bumpin' uglies, bone. Otherwise, they're gonna kill both of us."

He waits for whimpering, maybe even some crying. But he also knows that there are two sides to Oswald Cobblepot, and unfortunately for him at this moment, he isn't James Gordon. 

"I would rather die."

There it is. He knows that there isn't much of a chance of them getting out of this on their own. The two previous officers had been some of the best, and they couldn't do it. But he's still going to have to try, because there's no way in hell that he would ever try to force anyone into having sex with him. A murderer, a gambler, a liar, yes. He's a sinner, and he'll admit it to anyone he crosses paths with. But a rapist is something he's not. Not that it matters. They both have to comply in order to get out of this alive. 

A stab of something uncomfortable hits Harvey in the gut. If he was another man, his partner, maybe he wouldn't be refused. Maybe he wouldn't be staring a gun in the face, metaphorically speaking (for now). But Harvey has always been willing to get dirty, unlike Jim, and that very difference between them makes the world. 

"Then the both of us will. Thanks a lot."

Harvey's head slumps back against the chair. Another sigh leaves him as he closes his eyes. Until noon. That's all he has to figure out a way out of this mess. Why him? Because he's been sticking his neck out to really solve cases lately? If that's the case, why not his partner? And why the Penguin? He considers all of this while he mentally counts backwards from five. When he's finished, he slowly gets up, stretches, and begins his search for an exit. 

"Why did they choose us for this little social experiment?"

'Experiment.' That's an interesting view on it. Jim had said something along the same lines, but his own working theory is that it's some sicko who just gets his rocks off watching men screw against their will. All different physical types, different ages. None of the pairs had anything other than their jobs in common, far as the GCPD could tell. 

He's scanning the bathroom while he answers. He doesn't look at Oswald; the only physical response that he gives him is a shrug. 

"Your guess is as good as mine. All we really know is what Ronn, the first cop they took, told us before he skipped town. They kept him for about a month. Each day him and his partner had to get down to business. If not, they would be shocked. Badly. After that, if they still didn't get with the program--" Here, as he's leaving the bathroom, he looks Cobblepot square in the eye as he mimics a shot going off against his head. "We think that's what happened to the cop in the second case. Kind of."

Nothing in the room of particular interest other than a small refrigerator against a wall. It has a type of beer stocked in it that he's not particularly fond of but opens none the less. He offers one to Oswald, and doesn't take it all that hard when the man refuses, saying that cheap alcohol is for lowlifes. More for him then. 

"What exactly do you mean by 'kind of'?"

Harvey searches through the drawers in the bedside table. He isn't too surprised to see condoms and lube in them. He's growing agitated though. There's nothing of real use anywhere he looks. He's entertained the idea of breaking the bathroom mirror glass and cutting Cobblepot's throat with it, ensuring himself a quick death by bullet instead of whatever they plan to do with him after the Penguin's refusal, but it's one of his half-assed plans that he can't find enough of a crap to go through with. 

"Well, that's the thing. Only one of them, Officer Danvers, was shot down. We think he poisoned his partner, so the kidnappers put him down. That's the best we can figure. Not much to go on, you know?"

He's running his fingers along the walls. There has to be another door in here somewhere. How else would they move the furniture in? His spiteful side is refusing to look at his roommate, but he wants to say that HE'S part of the furniture. He knows that that isn't true though, that Oswald Cobblepot hasn't morphed into the bed. He can hear movement, blankets shuffling. 

"It's from above. The door. It's a trap door in the ceiling."

Harvey wants to say that that's ridiculous, but it's really not considering their situation. Cobblepot is pointing up when he looks at him, and Harvey follows the direction with his eyes. Surely enough, there's a break in the plaster. 

"I'll give you a boost."

He doesn't know how the Penguin's leg will fare climbing on top of his shoulders, but he doubts the man could handle his weight. Oswald is nodding his agreement. 

Harvey does most of the work, the heavy lifting not so heavy. Cobblepot could use some more pounds on him, and he plans to tell the guy this as soon as his feet are away from his face. Lifting the smaller man is a quick motion, more fluid than it should have been. Lighter than some of the broads he's been with. There might have been a smirk on his face at that if the situation wasn't so dire. 

Oswald pushes at the door, frustrated noises making it obvious how well his efforts are turning out. Harvey's scanning the room, racking his brain for something heavy enough to push at it with. Maybe if he moved the bed and stood on it? But the bed seems to be screwed into the floor. It wouldn't do him much good anyway. 

"I believe there's an object on top of it."

They're fucked, and not even in the literal sense. Might as well have another beer while he tries to think of another way out of his current mess. Maybe Jim will find them. If anyone could, it'd be the golden boy. 

He puts Oswald back down on the ground, mindful of his leg. His clothes and the scant skin he had brushed against had been soft. 

He can't help but think that there's something wrong with him, his priorities, and his dick while he opens his second beer. Must be because of his impending death. 

"Is that it? Are you just giving up?"

He sits down on what he's now deemed his chair; it might help him think it out if he's not on his feet. He shrugs again, not really wanting the other man to speak. 

"Give me a minute."

A massive eye roll is the only response that Harvey gets. Oswald begins his own search of the room. More power to him. If he can find something Harvey missed, he'll buy him a bottle of the good stuff when (if) they get out of here. What kind of liquor would a club owner prefer? Bullock couldn't guess what the peculiar little man would drink. Best not risk sending him anything then, least he offend Cobblepot's delicate sensibilities. 

An hour passes by slowly with Oswald looking and Harvey thinking about where to look. It's when the Penguin picks up a candle and throws it at a wall, smashing it, yelling that Harvey is useless, that the detective has had enough. 

"Careful, darling. I think that was supposed to help set the mood."

He knows that the name was an overstep. The look in Cobblepot's eyes when his head snaps up to glare at him is as deadly as he's ever seen in any of the criminals he's put away over the long years. The problem is that he just can't bother to give a shit about keeping his trap shut at this moment. Not with death looming. 

"What? Didn't like the scent? Pineapple Kiwi not to your liking? Maybe if you ask them real nicely, they'll send down Mango Breeze. And, hey, maybe they'll throw in some of that nice, expensive alcohol you were going on about earlier! We could have a real night on our hands, what with the stars and the--"

He hadn't expected Oswald to let him carry on for as long as he had, but the fist to his face still came as a surprise--or it would have if it had made contact. Harvey is quicker though, grabbing his wrist and pulling him down onto his lap, Oswald's arm forced behind his back. Harvey's free arm goes against the slimmer man's waist, holding him tightly against his body. 

Harvey isn't hurting Cobblepot, but it's enough to infuriate the man past his limit. Oswald tries to fight against him, squirming and flailing with his free arm, trying to grab and pull and twist. It doesn't matter though. The Penguin's frustration does him in, and after several minutes of struggle, he slumps forward as much as Harvey will allow. He's shaking, and Harvey isn't sure if it's from rage or fear, but neither bodes well for them. 

"Listen," If there's sympathy in his voice, he'll blame it on James Gordon softening him, not on the terrified (because Harvey knows that that's the root emotion driving anything Cobblepot is doing at this time) person breathing too harshly. "This isn't exactly ideal for me either. But you can handle it. We've both been through worse. You were almost crushed in a car, remember? That's gotta be worse than having sex with me." 

He isn't really sure if the rumor about Maroni's torture is true, but he runs with it. How many shots does he have left? Going by the laugh coming from the man, the still shaking man, he blew this one. Cruel, not reassured. Great. 

"I can feel your arousal against me. It's disgusting. You're enjoying this. Don't pretend otherwise." 

If his blood had started to rush in that direction, well, who could blame him? It had been a while, and Cobblepot was rubbing against him with every twist. 

"Hey, I won't deny it. It's been a rough day, there's some booze in me, and you were riding me like a pro, whether you meant to or not." A shrug. "It doesn't mean anything, kid. I'm not gonna try to force you into anything." His grip slackens. "But it is the only way to ensure us both makin' it through the night. Think on it a while."

He lets Oswald go, and the man jumps off of him like Harvey's on fire. He turns to face him, ice and flame both alive in his eyes. 

"I will never."

Harvey doesn't have anything to say to that. He keeps his mouth shut for once, and they pass hours away in silence, other than the Penguin's nervous remarks to himself. Time is slipping away, and neither has found any clue to a way of getting out. 

Two more candles (pumpkin spice and ruby red apple), Harvey's empty beer bottles, a bottle of body wash, and a container of toothpaste have been smashed, all by Oswald's shaking hands. By the fifth hour, Harvey had joined him, adding a small fake fern, picture frame, and another candle (cool surf) to the mess. Now it was starting to look as bad as his apartment. Too bad he'll never see the dive again; a lot of fond memories in there. 

In his anger, he shouts at the ceiling some things that his common sense tells him to keep to himself. But he can't see the point. If he's going to die, he'd at least like to blow off some steam first. As usual though, letting off steam causes an explosion. 

"My, my. What a temper you have, Detective. The both of you. I'm ashamed of you. I thought you would play along better than this. Your time is almost up, and now I'm going to have to punish you for creating such an ugly mess."

He wants to ask what the guy can do from his seat, but before he can, he's given the answer he already knows. A shock goes off simultaneously, both him and the Penguin doubling over in pain, screaming. He doesn't know where it came from. He can't even think the first moments afterwards. It happens again. A third time. By the fifth time, he's on his knees. Oswald fell the third, maybe four feet away from him. It's not enough to do any major damage, but they'll both be shaking for a while--not that Cobblepot ever stopped. 

Half an hour passes before either of them move. Oswald is first. He tries to move to the bed, but Harvey has to force himself to get up and help him. 

"Th-thank you."

Bullock nods, an amazing feat in his opinion. He then allows himself to collapse onto the floor with his back pressed against the bed. He can hear Cobblepot rustling around behind him. He thinks that the man is whimpering, but he can't find it in him to pay too much attention. 

They sit like this for an hour. After that, Harvey pulls himself to his feet. 

"What're you d-doing?"

Scared but hopeful. It breaks Harvey's heart a little bit. 

He doesn't answer Oswald. He goes back to searching for a way out until he can't. After that, it's up in the air. 

"Sorry, kid."

He collapses into his chair. He never did get those dogs he wanted for breakfast. The last thing he ate was some crappy take out with Jim. Could've been worse. 

Harvey decides that he's going to spend his last hour doing what he does best: putting down some cold ones. Useful, he knows; but in the hours they've tried, he's put as much effort as he could into finding a way out of this mess. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It's when his eyes are slipping closed that he hears the unexpected voice of his new savior. 

"Alright. But it has to be on the bed."


End file.
